Thanks to the passage of last year’s Battle Ground Public Schools (BGPS) capital levy, the district installed a new earthquake early warning system at Amboy Middle School ahead of the next big shake.
At 1:20 p.m. on Tuesday, Feb. 25, Amboy Middle School students and staff were alerted with “Drop down, take cover under a desk or table and hold on. Stay indoors until the shaking stops and you are sure it is safe to exit …”
The alert was the first test of the new ShakeAlert system that provides early warnings for quakes 5.0 and above. The ShakeAlert system uses a network of seismometers and ground-motion sensors placed throughout Washington, Oregon and California, the district stated. The sensors continuously monitor ground movements in order to feed real-time data to a central processing system. When an earthquake occurs, the system is able to rapidly assess the magnitude and the intensity at various locations, the district added.
“I have previous experience, not here in Washington but in Alaska, with earthquakes in the schools as a teacher,” Amboy Middle School Assistant Principal Lori Walker said. “So, it’s very important that we are ready to go and the nice thing about this is the early warning system is that human factor. So if we’re not able to get to the thing because the floor is bouncing around, it just goes. That’s what we’re excited about, and it’s great to hear that it worked.”
The system is also able to provide a warning up to a minute ahead of any ground motion, which provides crucial time for school-aged students to find a safe location if they aren’t directly at their desks.
“The only alert that we would have gotten in the past would have been over a text message or if somebody has an app that ties into the earthquake early warning system,” Scott McDaniel, director of technology services at BGPS, said. “That’s only as reliable as the cell towers are. What we have with this is communication through our network receiving information from all of these early earthquake warning sensors that are really all over the Pacific Northwest from California to Canada.”
McDaniel added that other area schools have the early warning system, including Prairie High School.
The system will sound off its warning automatically with no delay or human error. If the system determines the damaging earthquake motions are completed or won’t hit the area, the alert will automatically send the all clear, as heard during the test.
“Beforehand, schools don’t have anything that’s giving them that early warning, so I thought it was an easy decision to make,” McDaniel said of adding the alert system. “Anything we can do to reduce the risk to students and to people, I think is the most important thing that we can invest money in. Just like we do fire alarms, you know. The fire detection systems that are in place, we know before anybody is getting hurt, whether or not that’s going to happen, we may as well have it for other emergencies.”
McDaniel said the range the system will pick up on for an earthquake all depends on the strength of the earthquake and if the system determines the geographic area will be impacted. The choice to place one at Amboy Middle School, McDaniel says, is that different areas have different impacts from a 5.0 or greater earthquake even throughout the district’s campuses.
“It just depends on how fast they see that initial wave hit and where the epicenter is, you know,” he said. “Down in certain areas of Vancouver, it depends on the geography. Like, are we talking about a heavy rock foundation or are we talking about a sand? As far as what’s underground, what’s our bedrock like?”
To go hand-in-hand with earthquake warnings, BGPS is ensuring that emergency services’ communication within school buildings remains clear and viable. The district installed new indoor antenna systems at Battle Ground High School, the Daybreak schools campus and Chief Umtuch Middle School as part of a grant with the help of the city of Battle Ground.
McDaniel said the district will look to state funding from the Department of Commerce to finish the remaining four buildings that are in need of the upgrades outside of the city limits of Battle Ground.
